Thursday, March 10, 2011

Children's shows have grown less awesome over the years.

When I was a kid, shows were, in a word, excellent. There were classics, like Sesame Street (before Elmo's world and Cookie Monsters de-cookiefication). And there were the beginnings of long-running shows, like Arthur. There was Rugrats, and Doug ,and Pinky and the Brain, and Ren and Stimpy, and Dexter's Lab, and and various babyified versions of older shows, such as Tom and Jerry Kids and Tiny Toon Adventures.

But most of all, for me anyway, there was The Busy World of Richard Scarry.

Most people haven't heard of this show, and thus most people were deprived. This show was (still is?) my all-time favorite. I'm pretty sure I started watching it at the age of like one. Because it clearly impacted me enough that I named my stuffed hippo that I received at the age of two...

...after this character on the show:

Those characters were all fantastic. Hilda Hippo, and Lowly Worm, and Huckle Cat, and Bannas Gorilla, and Mr. Fixit, and Mr. Frumble... But they weren't just show characters. They were book characters, from books I grew up having read to me. Richard Scarry's Best Storybook Ever, and Cars and Trucks and Things That Go, and Busy, Busy World (Politically correct? Not even a little bit. Does that matter at all? Nope.). The author died in 1994, but those books are classics, which were reinforced as a central part of my early childhood by the show. It only ran from 1992 to 1996, but those were four really good years.

This was my favorite episode. I'm feeling really nostalgic all of the sudden and therefore rambling in a way that renders this post incomprehensible. Life was a lot simpler when I was younger.